From zombie economy to zombie employee

Several studies show a significant decline in staff loyalty, and when the crisis peaked, disillusion and lack of work ethic marked the culture in many companies. 

In brief: Companies deal with a zombie workforce: half alive, half dead.

If you focus on reducing expenses alone, you risk overlooking the actual challenge: How to add new energy to a demoralized workforce, the very same employees who the business depend upon.

The answer is not only cutting back on jobs, but also reforming teams and mobilizing the demoralized employees.

If it is going to make any sense at all, change must come from the top. Active communication is essential in order to recreate the commitment of the workforce. Instead of vanishing behind closed doors, management must act more confident, communicate more openly and actively phrase the questions, the company must be able to answer. Telling the truth, even when the news is anything but positive and treating the employees as adult human beings, prompts respect.

It is essential to recreate the energy in the zombie employees, if they are to regard the problems the company faces as a common challenge and be inspired into having faith in their leaders again.

Communication alone is not enough, though. Action is required. The employees must be engaged on a daily basis in the ongoing revival of the company, to ensure that products, processes, competences, cooperation and culture are shaped up to meet the demands of the future. This can only happen, when all leaders are capable of handling human resource management in an honest and appreciative way.

During the recession many companies stopped hiring. This can backfire, because freezing employment can create a deadlock, lack of innovation and a decrease in productivity.

However, the biggest problem is that the number of employees, who does not feel acknowledged, is increasing. And the perceived lack of acknowledgement leads to lower productivity and negative energy. And that potentially leads to an even higher percentage of zombie employees (unless they have found themselves another employment in the meantime).

Even though the zombie employee is a potential threat, the current situation gives leaders and human resource managers an opportunity to do things differently. The public sector in particularly will be affected by the consequences of the zombie condition, because the after effects of the crisis will hit here in the next months and years as it already has done in the private sector. Right now a lot of institutions and municipalities are facing significant budget cuts.

Half of all companies have a wrong business model”. That is quite a statement. This might be a gut feel, but there is always room to improve.

It is never easy finding a business model that is 100% right every time and there are certainly no short cuts to finding one that works. Often it depends on trial and error and the only sure way to see if something is going to work is to actually try it. The only way to know for sure is to try it. It is hard to earn money within the aviation industry, so finding creative solutions is the only way to succeed. Success is often found by the low-cost airlines that have become adept at finding business models where earnings come from sources other than their core product.

Ryan Air, for example has been very controversial with announcements around charging passengers to use the toilets on the airplanes as well as only having one pilot and using cabin crew as emergency pilots if necessary. These initiatives are unconventional, but they demonstrate that there ways to increase earnings outside of the core product. Companies need to find them. The low-cost airline industry itself is a case-in-point. When Ryan Air and EasyJet first came onto the market, there was skepticism that they would work as a business model. But the solid economic results speak for themselves. Being innovative pays off.

Another area where airlines can increase their profitability is by using the passenger data that all airlines have in abundance. The data can be used in creating a better dialogue with the customers, for instance by using available data on a customer to deliver an offer customized to them. Amazon has been practicing this for years: when you click on

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